Davidson and Amherst colleges and Wesleyan University have recently taken steps to reduce or eliminate loans from their financial aid policies.
Davidson announced last spring that it could afford to stop issuing need-based loans to students, according to Linda Erickson, a financial aid counselor at Davidson. The college now covers full tuition aid through grants and campus jobs after determining financial need, Erickson said.
Before the policy change, "students were borrowing money in their own names and graduating with a lot of debt," she said, adding that students who want to enter the workforce after graduation often land jobs that do not pay enough to cover their debt.
"Given the nature of our student body, many students hope to work for non-profit organizations following (graduation). These are not high-paying jobs," Erickson said. Absent loans, she explained, students can choose a career without having to take this debt into consideration.
After the changes in financial aid policy were announced last spring, the yield of accepted students who matriculate at Davidson increased from 39.4 percent to 41.6 percent, according to a Nov. 2 article in Inside Higher Education.
Amherst will also eliminate all loans as part of its financial aid packages next academic year, said Joe Case, the college's director of financial aid.
Amherst has been reducing debt for some time, he said. "Since the mid-1980s, the college has packaged reduced loan levels for students from lower-income backgrounds," Case said. "In 1999, this practice was expanded to students from modest-income backgrounds, and loans were eliminated from aid packages for students from lowest-income backgrounds." Case said the new policy might not eliminate loans altogether for some students if they incur additional expenses, such as for a new computer or non-credit music classes.
Wesleyan has announced that it will eliminate loans for students with family incomes of less than $40,000 starting in the fall of 2008, according to David Pesci, the university's director of media relations. "The president saw a need to reduce debt," Pesci said, "and this is what we can presently do with our given endowment."
One of the first schools to switch from loans to grant-based financial aid was Princeton University, which eliminated loans from all financial aid packages in 2001.
Robin Moscato, director of undergraduate financial aid at Princeton, said, "The University felt that the amount of debt for students was escalating, and we wanted to avoid this." Instead, she said, funds are given to the students through grants, supplied by the university's endowment, and a work-study requirement.
Williams has also announced that it will eliminate loans in its financial aid packages, according the Inside Higher Education article.
Brown has not followed these schools in eliminating loans. But Director of Financial Aid James Tilton emphasized Brown's commitment to lowering student debt, saying the average student need-based loan debt has fallen from $22,000 in 2002 to $16,000 in 2003, following changes in the financial aid policies.
"Student loans are not considered the main source of financial aid," Tilton added, "but instead are used with other components such as parent and student contributions, federal and state grants, (University scholarship) and student employment to make up a student's financial aid award. Brown continues to look for aggressive ways of reducing loan debt for our students."
